When Tokyo’s Tsukiji Fish Market, the world’s oldest, largest and arguably most famous, closed last year, laments echoed throughout the globe. Two-starred Michelin chef Lionel Beccat had called it “a world unto itself.”
Photographer Shen Chao-Liang (沈昭良) has been visiting the iconic market since the early 1990s, documenting not only the people who spend much of their life there, but also the area where it was located, a history that can be traced back to 1657 when authorities reclaimed land along Tokyo Bay and christened it “Tsukiji” or “constructed land.”
Several of Shen’s large black-and-white prints will be on display at his solo exhibition, Tsukiji Fish Market, at Taipei’s AKI Gallery beginning tomorrow.
Photo courtesy of the artist and AKI Gallery
The opening will feature talks in Mandarin by Shen, with another series of talks on Jan. 4 by Lan Tsu-wei (藍祖蔚), film critic and deputy editor at the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) and independent curator Hiroshi Suganuma. The talks begin at 3pm.
Shen repeatedly visited the area starting from 1993 to capture the rise of Tsukiji and the people and tourists that made it come alive before it was relocated. The photos that will be on display serve both as beginning and coda, a career that reflect his own transition from photo-journalist to fine-art photographer.
Whenever in Tokyo, Shen would find himself mingling among the market’s morning crowds.
Photo courtesy of the artist and AKI Gallery
Some of the photographs border on the abstract, while others are grainy shots of workers shuffling among hundreds of frozen fish, the morning light illuminating the rising vapor, and fish mongers hawking their catches. Shen manages to capture both the mystique of why the market was attractive to tourists, but also the banality of its daily grind.
Tsukiji Fish Market records an objective perspective to the market’s development up until it closed last year. According to a blurb in the catalogue to the series, the presentation of images shows the interrelationship between people and the photographer and the narrative of this environment. It also provides possibilities to interpret what has been recorded.
■ Aki Gallery (也趣藝廊), 141 Minzu W Rd, Taipei City (台北市民族西路141號), tel: (02) 2599-1171. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from noon to 6:30pm
Photo courtesy of the artist and AKI Gallery
■ Opens tomorrow. Until Jan. 19
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